$4 MEDIEVAL KINGSHIP

•again become a spiritual force in the world. The foundation of England's
•commercial prosperity was laid during this reign when the government pro-
jected the woollen manufacturing industry. In 1331 Edward induced Flemish
•weavers to settle in his kingdom; in the following year he forbade his subjects to
•wear clothes made from imported cloths; and in 1337 a ban was even placed
on these foreign imported cloths. It is true that after the outbreak of the war
with France, when he sought to use Flanders as a " back entry " into the French
king's territories, Edward abandoned his protectionist policy ; but by that
lime the woollen manufacturing industry in England was firmly on its feet,
and when the competition with Flanders came it could be successfully met.

ON i6TH JULY 1377 Richard II., the eldest surviving son of the Black Prince,
•was crowned in great state in Westminster Abbey by Archbishop Simon Sudbury
of Canterbury. To Adam Usk, who witnessed the splendid spectacle, the ten
years' old king appeared " fair among men as another Absalom." Three days
after the coronation parliament met to appoint a council to guide the boy-
iking, and it was significant that no place in it was found for John of Gaunt, the
Icing's uncle.

Uncles were to be the plague of Richard's young life. His grandfather
^Edward III. had fathered twelve children, seven sons and five daughters, and
lie had secured for them territorial status befitting their rank. Only three of
these sons were alive in 1377 : J°hn of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and self-
styled King of Castile; Edmund of Langley, Earl of Cambridge and later to
"be created Duke of York ; and Thomas of Woodstock, upon whom immediately
after Richard's coronation was bestowed the earldom of Buckingham and
much later the dukedom of Gloucester. John of Gaunt was already suspected
of having designs upon the throne : this was the reason for his exclusion from
the council of. regency. He was an ambitious man, and not overscrupulous,
and he had the awkward knack of always being on wrong side of the fencev
lEdmund of Langley, on the other hand, was a mild-mannered man of little"^
ambition. He was placed on the council of regency, and remained consistently
iaithful to his nephew until his deposition in 1399. Thomas of Woodstock was
in 1377 an unknown political quantity, but he was of imperious temper, head-
strong, and impolitic; and it was not to be expected that he would allow
Mnself to be overshadowed by his elder brothers.

Thus the earlier part of Richard's reign was taken up with a fierce rivalry
"between John of Gaunt and Thomas of Woodstock. It began in 1381, when
the former's son and heir, Henry of Bolingbroke, was married to Mary de Bohun.
Thomas of Woodstock was married to her elder sister, and he had hoped to
secure undisputed control of the vast de Bohun lands by inducing his sister-in-
law Mary to take the veil. The marriage wrecked that plan, and Thomas of